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It’s an absurd, comic paradox: I can’t stop fidgeting with my vast white napkin, which is placed folded side towards me — in line with traditional etiquette — but keeps slithering down my lap like a satin-stitched manta ray. At the same time, I am doing my best impression of a seated corpse that has entered the rigor mortis stage — shoulders hauled back, head pulled up with an invisible thread.

A waitress arrives with a silver pot of tea. I eye it like an undetonated bomb, imagining with a six-year-old’s intensity of gory detail and colour the variety of ways I could end up spilling it everywhere.

I am at the Lanesborough hotel in London, which has recently launched an afternoon tea etiquette experience in partnership with Debrett’s, which has been Britain’s authority on etiquette and influence since 1769.

The Lanesborough’s powder-blue dining room is a delightfully pompous setting for my class. Think Grecian bas relief depicting romping centaurs, shelves holding stone Roman heads with flattened eyeballs and snail-shell curls, and more gold foiling than you’d find on the set of a King Midas play. The chink of china and plink of the piano bounces off the monstrously large chandeliers.

The Lanesborough's powder-blue dining room is a delightfully pompous setting for class.

The first of my etiquette trainers for the session is Rupert Wesson, academy director at Debrett’s, a man marinated in confidence with a double-pump, palm-gripping handshake, fibrils of energy and emphasis running through every word he utters and a tendency to underscore his words by prodding his fingers forcefully at the air. When he mentions a 16-year stint in the RAF I am not in the least surprised.

The second is etiquette expert Jo Bryant, with her subtle but gripping poise and immaculately blow-dried chestnut hair; my initial thought is that she must invite a tedious stream of comparisons with the Duchess of Cambridge everywhere she goes. I don’t bore her with the hypothesis.

A tea sommelier also wafts up to the table every so often, to demonstrate her prowess on all things related to Britain’s favourite brew. She advises on blends that suit my palate and will complement the sandwiches and pastries.

Jo leads the etiquette instruction in her clipped, clarion tone. “One person becomes the designated server of the tea. You pour like this — not too high or it’ll slop,” she demonstrates with dainty, liquescent hand gestures. “Then you take the milk jug and add the right amount for that particular person. Also, this is important: tea before milk, always.”

20th-century novelist Evelyn Waugh famously touched on this peculiarly prized classist fetishism of the English when wrote about the concept of a 'milk-in-first’ sort of person in his diary. “People who could only afford cheap porcelain put the milk in beforehand to avoid cracking their cups with boiling water,” Jo explains.

Neither of the experts argues that tea in first actually enhances taste. The idea of a ‘rules-before-rationale’ sort of person comes to mind — though admittedly it doesn’t have the same ring.

We move on. “You add tea and milk to each cup individually and hand them out one at a time, starting with the most senior person in the room. What you don’t do is lay out all the tea cups and pour them in bulk,” Jo’s brow briefly becomes scored with lines of contempt: “That’s the easy way, not the British way.”

Stirring tea clockwise is a crime. Anti-clockwise is equally delinquent — only a back-and-forth motion from 12 o’clock to six o’clock is permissible, according to Jo. “When you hold the cup, don’t stick your little finger out,” she also tells me. “Uncouth to flash the signet ring, eh?” I quip. Jo doesn’t seem to find it funny. Instead she tells me to bring the cup to my mouth and not the other way round.

Rupert explains the history behind tea in the perfect storytelling voice, which is both grainy and rimmed with softness. Chinese Emperor Shennong discovered it in 5000 years ago when leaves from a wild tea bush accidentally fell into his hot water cup. “In China, drinking tea has always had a reflective, meditational aspect. The Chinese and Brits also share a tendency to revel in finding beauty in the smallest things.”

There was little beauty in the contents of the black market tea that flooded Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries: Customs clobbered huge taxes on the real thing. Unscrupulous smugglers offered a cheaper product on the sly, but filled it out with lead chromate and sheep’s dung. Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger finally reduced the tax in 1784, bringing the 100-year scandal to an end.

Anna Russell, the seventh duchess of Bedford, started the trend of afternoon tea in 1840 after complaining that the standard two meals a day wasn’t enough to stave off a regular ‘sinking feeling’ by the afternoon.

I have a sinking feeling of a different kind when Jo declares that afternoon tea is about self-restraint. “One cup and it looks like you haven’t had a good time. Three might look a bit thirsty.” I nod unconvincingly and glance shiftily at my teacup; I’m already on my fourth.

Try the Lanesborough’s special blend of green and black tea, which is both citrusy and smoky with the spiced aftertaste of rose.

It doesn’t help that I am sipping on the Lanesborough’s special blend of green and black tea. I normally find green tea to be ashy and teeth-etching, but this concoction is a both citrusy and smoky, with a creaminess at the edges and the spicy aftertaste of rose.

The finger sandwiches offer fresh challenges. “The lighter-flavoured fillings should be consumed first,” I am told. “Put the sandwich down on your own plate in between small bites.” It’s a battle to eat these sandwiches with grace and control. The first has swollen, luscious slivers of cucumber between cushion-squishy strips of bread that are embedded with mint. The egg sandwiches are sprinkled with truffle, giving them a tang that is suspended somewhere between mushroom and obscenity. The coronation chicken sandwiches have just the right balance between nutty coolness and curried bass notes.

The scones course throws my whole thought system on bread consumption protocol into disarray. “You’re supposed to twist them in two with your hands, not use a knife,” Jo tells me. “It’s the same for bread rolls.” My mind flashes back to all the posh restaurants where I have hacked at my bread with the butter knife. And the correct pronunciation? Scone should rhyme with con, not cone. Both the Cornwall (jam then cream) and Devon (cream then jam) methods of application are acceptable.

Jo shreds the bottom half of her scone into small pieces. I don’t hide my disapproval of this silly rule, which makes the scone go cold more quickly. The unflappable empress of etiquette ignores me; instead she concentrates on putting small, perfect heaps of cream and compote onto her plate with a practised flick of the wrist that a passing eye might mistake for a wave of a magic wand. I impersonate my mentor, though the spattered effect on my plate is more Jackson Pollock in 3D than I’d have liked.

The scones are fragile and flaky rather than dense and claggy, and sweetened with nibs of fruit. The jam oozes and dribbles cheerfully under a cumulus cloud of clotted cream. Some of it ends up on the tablecloth. I surreptitiously slide my saucer over the stains with a feeling of guilt that is deeply pleasurable.

Class concludes with musings on the future of etiquette. “The Victorians have given etiquette a bad name with all their rules,” says Jo. “We like to think of it as modern manners driven by consideration for others, but allowing a degree of flexibility.” There doesn’t seem to be much flexibility in the demonisation of the circular spoon stir. That said, I’ve started doing it with my morning Twinings. I feel like the dowager off Downton Abbey every time. Beauty in the smallest things, as Rupert says.

A Guide to Tea costs from £195 per person, available for a minimum booking of four people. For reservations, contact: The Lanesborough (020 7259 5599: lanesborough.com/etiquette). For more information on the Lanesborough, read the full review, and for more recommendations for hotels near Hyde Park, read our guide to the best hotels.